Internal Text Link Appearing As Normal Text ?, Is it allowed (by Google) to keep lay-out clean Options

[robmarketshare]

If you have some internal links and have them appear the same as the normal text, unless one hoovers over it ( it turns blue instead of black), because you don't want to upset your lay-out to much, would this be considered a hidden and forbidden link ?

[Jill]

No. But if you really don't want people to click them and are basically just linking to some sort of keyword-stuffed doorway pages, you may want to rethink the strategy.

But no, in and of themselves, the links are not hidden.

Reason for edit: added: not

[robmarketshare]

But no, in and of themselves, the links are hidden.

you ment: aren't hidden?? and not leading to a penalty from Google ? or ??

[Jill]

Yes sorry, are not hidden. Will change that in the post.

[robmarketshare]

So it is sufficient that they change color when hoovered.
I seem to recall Matt C had someting against links looking like plain text.
( seo makes one paranoia sometimes ???)

[qwerty]

I'm not a search engine, but I'd have a problem with it. If there's nothing setting the text apart from everything else unless I happen to mouse over it, I'm going to conclude (assuming I accidentally find the links) that you don't want me to know these are links.

Sure, it's not as bad as setting them up so that nothing at all sets them apart, even in the hover state, but it's clear that the links aren't there for people. If they're not there for people, they must be there exclusively for spiders, and I don't like the idea of doing anything exclusively for spiders unless it's something the search engines have specifically suggested (e.g. robots.txt or XML sitemaps).

[robmarketshare]

and that leaves me ...

Potentialy harmfull, but no evidence yet ?
Not adviced, but not forbidden ?

No need to underline them but make the links more visibel with a slightly offset color or size ?

[Jill]

I guess the question is why do you want to do this? Is it basically to hide the links? If so, then yeah, it's a bad idea.

It's hard to think of a legitimate reason to do it since it's a usability nightmare.

[Randy]

I've always had the same issue with it Bob and Jill have expressed. I don't think the search engines do anything about links that don't necessarily look like links, but making 'em look that way is a serious usability if the links are around normal text content.

Many of my sites have non-underlined link text in both normal navigation blocks and footer navigation blocks. However it doesn't stay normal looking if anyone mouses over the text. That's as far as I push it for design reasons. Most time however I try to make the linking text look a bit different even in navigation panes. I'll change the color or bold it a bit via css font-weight. Just to make it stand out. (From a design perspective I've simply never been a big fan a whole blocks of underlined text.)

But when a link appears in the actual copy I always do something more with it. That may mean bolding and/or changing the color, and almost always using the traditional underlining of link text. My usability tests have always shown that's what real people use (subconsciously I'm sure) as a trigger to recognize a link is a link. I've done a significant number of tests on this subject across dozens of sites to see how often these in content links get clicked, giving them different looks. It's never even been close.

So for me at least it doesn't really matter how the search engines view normal looking link text in the content. If something is going adversely affect user click actions as much as making content links look like normal text, it's just not a consideration.

[robmarketshare]

As always it will be hard to convince the client to stop what he thinks is an excelent way of improving his internal linking rates withou disturbing the visitors (?). Even harder if there is no known penalty for it. Believe it or not, clients don't always have common sence when it comes to improving their "improved" pages...;-)

But thanks for the advices and arguments agian.

[Scottie]

I want to know why you are hoovering links... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/vaccuum.gif)

[Jill]

an excelent way of improving his internal linking rates withou disturbing the visitors (?)

Ahh tricking the search engines. Nice. It's called search engine spam, and there is indeed penalities for it if/when caught.

[Randy]

Well, not that it'll probably do any good, but I guess you could point them to the Quality area of the Google Webmaster Guidelines to see if it makes an impression on them. Specifically make them read bullet point #2 of the basic principles.

Though the link to the hidden text or hidden links doesn't describe exactly what they're doing, hiding these links is essentially what they're doing. So I suppose you could use Google's own guidelines to possibly scare them straight. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/angel_not.gif)

[maleman]

If you have some internal links and have them appear the same as the normal text, unless one hoovers over it ( it turns blue instead of black), because you don't want to upset your lay-out to much, would this be considered a hidden and forbidden link ?

Get rid of it and make the links the way they're supposed to be made.

[robmarketshare]

@scottie: just want to be the only male person in Europe to do some hoovering !